Business Continuity Manager BCM^LITE.

A specific application for this solution being the ability to implement partial invocations in perhaps larger buildings where the nature of the “disaster” only requires a certain number of employees being re-located – or where more flexible working practices are required allowing any number of employees to work remotely on an all day, every day, basis – as may be the case in pandemic planning.

GemaTech’s BCM^LITE comprises a sophisticated, yet simple to use, software application which runs on gematech’s proprietary GTE hardware platform and has been specifically designed for conventional businesses that are looking to recover, their inbound calls - the lifeblood of any company - by being able to intelligently re-direct them to any number of alternative numbers, or groups of numbers, literally anywhere in the world including alternative land lines, mobile phones, satellite phones, and specifically re-routing incoming fax calls to individual fax machines to alternative fax machines at pre-selected alternative locations - and capable of being invoked literally seconds after a communications failure has occurred. Any number of individual call plans can be established in advance using simple Excel type spreadsheets with authorised members of the Crisis Control Team simply selecting the most appropriate plan applicable to the specific event from which the business needs to recover by literally “dragging and dropping” the selected plan into the appropriate BCM^LITE icon located on a remote PC, laptop using a Wi-Fi or Internet connection, or a PDA via a secure Web connection via a secure data connection to the BCM^LITE.

It should be emphasised however that GemaTech’s BCM^LITE unit is also capable of re-routing data and video conferencing calls as well as re-routing individual voice and fax calls to other locations.

Specifically designed to be located within the sanctity and security of the end-user customer’s Tier 1 carrier’s exchange (i.e. BT, COLT Telecom, NTL, THUS etc.), the BCM^LITE unit’s primary function is to protect against the failure of any element of the telephony infrastructure having left the sanctity of the serving exchange – commonly referred to as “the last mile”. This could be caused by a cut / damaged telephone cable running between the Exchange and the end customer’s office building, possibly as a result of road works; the failure of the PBX itself through technical failure, fire, flood etc. or loss of the building, or access to the building, through fire, flood, terrorist attack etc.

GemaTech’s BCM^LITE unit is capable or re-routing incoming calls directed to up to 32,000 DDIs to up to 32,000 alternative numbers including groups of numbers, via any number of alternative call plans with any number of personalised, company specific, announcements being played to both the incoming caller and the call recipient. However a “standard” product offering will comprise the re-routing of up to 10,000 DDIs to up to 10,000 alternative numbers including groups of numbers, via up to 99 different call plans and incorporating up to 99 different personalised announcements – which can be played simultaneously to any number of incoming callers and recipients of incoming calls.

Each BCM^LITE unit is capable of re-routing up to 30 concurrent inbound calls. Should it be necessary to re-route more than 30 concurrent calls then additional BCM^LITE units are simply “bolted together” to create a “cluster” which operate as one seamless solution. Up to 255 BCM^LITE units can be connected together if required however call plans are only loaded once being replicated automatically across all units in the “cluster “.

Authorised administrators may view any call plan and make changes, real time, using the Graphical User Interface (GUI) – an Excel type spreadsheet. An administrator may add or remove a user, or change a password. Individual users can also set themselves as available from a PC or Laptop.

BCM^LITE OPTION I – see configuration diagrams. Designed to recover up to 30 concurrent inbound calls following the failure of an ISDN30 circuit dedicated to the delivery of inbound only calls – where outbound calls are made via a separate dedicated circuit, normally obtained from an alternative carrier. Located in the serving Digital Local Exchange (DLE) the BCM^LITE unit is connected to 2 x ISDN30 voice circuits (or to a single ISDN30 if the requirement is to only recover up to 15 concurrent inbound calls). Following a failure of the circuit connecting to the customer’s offices, calls are diverted “on failure” to the ISDN30 circuit connected to the BCM^LITE unit with inbound calls re-directed to alternative numbers and / or destinations - all in accordance with the default plan already loaded into the BCM^LITE unit or as per an alternative plan chosen by the authorised member of the company’s Crisis Control Team.

BCM^LITE OPTION II – see configuration diagrams. Designed to recover up to 15 concurrent inbound calls following the failure of an ISDN30 circuit where both inbound and outbound calls are delivered to / from the company’s offices are delivered from the same circuit. Located in the serving Digital Local Exchange (DLE) the BCM^LITE unit is connected “in-line” with the original ISDN30 voice circuit with a G.703 2Mb Lease Line connecting the BCM^LITE located in the carrier’s DLE to the customer’s PBX. Following a failure of the circuit connecting to the customer’s offices, calls can be instantaneously re-directed by the BCM^LITE to alternative numbers and / or destinations - all in accordance with the default plan already loaded into the BCM^LITE unit or as per an alternative plan chosen by the authorised member of the company’s Crisis Control Team.